In the 1980s, Bill Gates told Apple’s CEO at the time, John Sculley (the former soft drink executive), that he should license the Mac OS. As far as Gates was concerned, Apple would own the market. Well, what really happened was that Sculley, in his infinite stupidity, actually licensed some of the Mac OS to […]

Since Psystar, a tiny Florida-based company, began to sell Mac clones this past spring, I’m sure many of you wondered just when Apple would respond. For weeks, the silence seemed deafening, or maybe the early teething problems Psystar encountered before they got their venture up and running gave Apple hope that they’d be able to […]

Just today, my copy of the August 2008 issue of Macworld arrived, with a fascinating headline situated above the title: “Mac CLones: Are They Coming Back?” This would seem a silly proposition, since Steve Jobs ejected the last round of cloners, because their actions were threatening Apple. While the company’s erstwhile executives felt that ceding […]

Just the other day, I had a pleasant conversation with Macworld’s Rob Griffiths about his “FrankenMac” project, his weekend warrior project to build a Mac from off-the-shelf PC parts. In a sense, I understand what he was attempting to do, and it wasn’t to save money, not if you value your time. Back when I […]